Drover

The wind whipped across the vast expanse of the cracked, barren landscape that stood before Sancho Kidd. As he unclasped the worn down lid of his cantina and held the cool metal to his lips he gazed out at the winding line of Corriente cattle. They wandered aimlessly on the aridisol leveraging their tongues between the cracked dirt trying find signs of moisture. It had been three years since the drought had started and the land had shrivelled and malformed indiscriminately, wiping out land and cattle, simultaneously draining communities across the Sonora. Despite this, Sancho had continued to run cattle between Tumacacori and Nogales, battling the dry, the wind, the heat, the sweat, the thirst, the exhaustion, the monotony. He dismounted Silvestre, his lightly grey dappled mount, and sat down resting his body against her legs. From his satchel he pulled out a wooden spinning top and worked away on it with his pine-handled blade. After smoothing out the sides, he pulled his hat over his eyes, giving temporary reprieve from the relentless glare, and let his body relax. After some time Sancho roused himself and slowly rose, readying himself to continue, deftly mounting and hooking his boots into Silvestre's worn-down leather stirrups. He pulled his legs together, feeling the lean muscles of her flank as she drove forward through the cattle, responding quickly to her movements, forming into what almost seemed one large mass of bovine ambling through the unforgiving desert. As Sancho felt the wind pick up, he pulled up his russet, cotton bandana over his nose and tensed and untensed his legs for the long ride ahead.

Sancho could finally espy Sasabe through the shimmer of heat obscuring the horizon. Primarily a ranch, Sasabe had served as a crucial stop for drovers travelling through the Sonora. He had developed a routine of stopping by to sell some cattle and visit one of the local ranch hands, Juan Pablo. They had met out on the wide cattle-grazing fields and communicated through Sancho's limited English, each finding a strange sort of pleasure in seeing how each other lived. Sancho rarely staying in one place for more than a month and Juan Pablo who had started a young family in Sasabe living a life of hard labor and simplicity. They enjoyed long afternoons sitting out on the prairie fields with a stew bubbling away on a fire and Juan Pablo's two children running around the fire yelling in Spanish. As Sancho reminisced, he pulled out the spinning top, thinking of how the children would enjoy its hypnotic quality when you flick it just right. Pulling now into the outskirts of the ranch, he felt a coldness run down his body, an overwhelming sense of something gone awry. He was accustomed to seeing the fields being worked by ranch hands; tending to the cattle, filling water basins, lighting fires, or just smoking cigarettes. But as he darted across the field all he saw was cattle. Cattle wandering absently giving no clue to any changes. He lead his heard into the nearest pen and let them wander in this new, space. He quickly dismounted Silvestre tying her up to one of the fence posts bordering the fields and followed the edge of the fence line moving in long but deftly placed strides towards Juan Pablo's cabin. Reaching the field connected to the cabin he stopped and crouched below the fence peeking between the slats for activity. Seeing no movement, Sancho mentally reassessed his next moves, reaching down to his waist to reassure himself that his pistol and knife were still hanging ready, waiting. A jolt of tension ripped through his body, as he heard a noise coming from his left side, whipping out his revolver and pulling back the hammer, barrel pointing towards the sound. He crept towards the source as he saw a large heifer stamping her hooves into the dry dirt and driving her head into the fence, releasing clouds of dust. Moving his body under the highest rail, he saw the heifer's cause for concern: a slightly small Chinampo with black spots and an all-white belly stained a deep red by a deep gash that ran from neck to hind. Its organs were splayed out across the ground, the blood soaking deep into the cracked earth. As Sancho moved closer, he pulled his bandana over his nose, almost retching at the acrid smell of death and the irony taste in the atmosphere. Crouching down next to the slain Chinampo, he placed his hand into the cavity, feeling the jagged cuts of a serrated blade and the still warm, gentle flow of blood into the earth. Can't be more than a couple hours fresh, Sancho thought to himself. Taking a deep breath, his eyes focused back on the cabin; images of Juan Sancho, his wife, and his children moving through their life, contented with each other's company, flashed through his mind. "Hell's going on," he murmured under his breath.

Trying to avoid his consciousness rifling through the worst possibilities, he stepped up to Juan Pablo's back door. With barely his nose over the back window he peered into the house and saw no humans, no activity, no movement, emptiness. He moved back to the door and was surprised as it opened readily under a slight push. Even with the strong community of Sasabe the risk of bandits, gangs, and nasty opportunists had been steadily rising during the drought and an unlocked door felt like an inconceivable risk. Stepping inside, the same smell that had overtaken his senses out in the fields filled his body again. This overload meant he couldn't pinpoint a source moving through the cabin's communal space adorned with an oak table and four chairs, and the tiny attached kitchen, barely more than a burner and sink. A sense of dread and a raging pre-emptive anger overtook him as he stepped up to the bedroom, pushing open the door with an expectant creak. What befell him in that cramped room would burn a permanent position in his consciousness for as long as he lived. Four bodies strewn across the room, a mixture of bullet holes and arrows wounds peppering the corpses, blood spilling across the floorboards and walls soaking deep into the foundation. Beneath the indignant rage, a sense of solemnity sat within Sancho, a need to provide respect and care for what was left of this family. With a blank wall setting itself on his mind, he pulled the sheets off the bed and wrapped the two children in its covers, lifting them outside to the small fenced-off backyard paddock. He reached deep into his satchel till he felt the smooth wood of the spinning top, placing it tenderly on top of the morbid package. As he stepped back inside, he searched silently until he found a large blanket sitting finished on a loom in the corner of the living room. Intricately and lovingly patterned in muted reds, browns, and oranges, he lifted it off and moved back toward the bedroom. He heard the creak of a floorboard behind him as he leant down to the final two mutilated corpses, barely having time to spin around before an arrow ripped through the air. His body was unable to process any feeling, as the arrow pierced his temple lodging deep into his skull. Sancho hit the ground instantly, barely a metre away from Juan Pablo's body, feeling no pain as the light slowly drained from his eyes. Standing over him was a figure; barely over five feet tall, bare except for a pair of dusty cowhide shorts, red and black face paint smudged haphazardly over his face and neck, and deep scars running down his chest all the way to his ankles. His pupils, showed a wild ferocity, darting back and forth between the two bodies. He ran out the door chanting and hollering in almost inhuman voice, leaving inside the cabin three bodies, a symbol of senseless brutality, silently crying out for peace.